


Withdrawal Symptoms

by livtontea



Series: Addictive Tendencies [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Withdrawal, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt No Comfort, Metaphors, No Incest, Not Beta Read, Similes, Vomiting, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 00:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20498252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livtontea/pseuds/livtontea
Summary: Four, Five, Six. Two of seven siblings have to go through withdrawal. One of seven siblings has a withdrawal of a different kind.





	Withdrawal Symptoms

**Author's Note:**

> I kinda gave up at the end but! It's still good and I like this so all is well.
> 
> I'm so proud of myself I have a title that isn't song lyrics for once.

Klaus watches his fingers tap away on the table. His legs are shaking, one ankle crossed over the other in a futile attempt to stop the jitters crawling through his body. Klaus can feel his ribcage squeeze tighter and tighter around his lungs, forcing the breath out of him. His whole body feels like it’s melting.

He tries not to look at the bottles of wine on the wall.

It’s hopeless though, because his gaze inevitably drifts to the alcohol. His legs shake faster.

Klaus bites his lip. His teeth immediately start pulling at loose bits of skin, biting them off. Dead skin fills his mouth, like ants crawling down his throat, swarming through his esophagus, invading his stomach.

He wants some water.

He can’t. If he gets up, his hand is going to reach for the slim neck of a bottle, for the tinted glass flask filled with the amber or red or pale yellow of wine. His brain is going to be screaming as it tumbles downhill, yelling at him to walk to the fridge and take a clear glass from the cupboard, to press it against the door of the refrigerator and let the water pour into it and then down his throat, drowning the ants and setting him free.

But he won’t listen. His hand is going to reach for the slim neck of a bottle, the delicate stem of a wine glass, and tilt the bottle until the liquid floods out and paints the glass dark red on the inside. And then he’ll drink.

He’s come so far. That’s what everybody keeps repeating, saying it until he can’t bear listening anymore. He’s come so far in so little time. Voices invade his ears.

He can’t. He can’t throw it down the drain again like he has time and time before, he can’t betray their trust like that, he can’t betray Dave.

Dave. If Dave were here, he’d wrap his strong arms around Klaus and press his lips to his neck, mumbling about anything and nothing at all. He’d pull Klaus away from the bar, away from the stench of weed and booze, away from it all.

Dave isn’t here, and Ben isn’t here right now, busy browsing the library or watching their siblings or doing who knows what. All that’s there is Klaus and the shaky limbs and the path to intoxication and downfall. The yellow brick road to laughing and quiet and the downfall of his sobriety, the downfall of Klaus Hargreeves, Number Four, The Séance.

Maybe it’s better if he doesn’t get up at all. He’s dealt with the ants before, what’s another time?

Klaus sits there, jittering and trying to hold himself back until Diego walks into the room in search of Mom, and asks Klaus if he’s alright.

Is he?

.

Five’s fingers are covered in chalk, the dust trapping itself in the creases of his fingerprints, pushing itself under his nails, covering his skin. He doesn’t mind. Doesn’t have the time to, anyway. If he stops now everything is over, everything will collapse, and he’ll be alone again.

He rubs out another string of numbers from the wall. The powder leaves behind a white smear, which comes off easily enough when he rubs at it.

Chalk drifts from the wall to the floor, like ash falling from a burning piece of paper, the flame consuming it from the inside out. Like ash falling from the sky, from buildings burning bright, searing into Five’s retinas, blinding him. Like ashes and dust and the stench of thousands of rotting corpses in the air, slowly decaying, fading into the earth where they belong.

Five shivers. It’s hot.

He wants to shed his jacket, like a moth emerging from its cocoon, his wings billowing out behind him, fluttering in the wind. Still wet, but already drying in the air, preparing for flight.

He leaves it on. Who knows when he might need it.

The chalk, the ash, the smell is filling his lungs now. Smoke is burning his eyes, tears already collecting at the edges. He doesn’t stop writing, more and more numbers lining up in skewed rows.

There’s no more chalk left in his hand, he notices. It’s just his dirty finger drawing lines into the wall. Or the ground? Is Five writing on the rough wood of his room’s walls or on the grainy dirt of the ground? He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care. He needs to finish this.

More and more lines, overlapping, erasing. Words are circled, numbers are crossed out. Five keeps working.

His stomach aches with the dull pain of hunger, but he’s used to it. His head is spinning, just a little, from dehydration and lack of sleep, but he’s used to it. His hands are shaking.

Is there anything he _isn’t_ used to? He wonders.

Five doesn’t know where he is anymore. He keeps drifting between past and present. Which is which? Is there a difference?

He’s in a wasteland, all alone. Alone, alone. Nobody around for miles. Nobody around for... ever. Nobody.

Five’s hand hurts. He can write with both, of course, but his right hand has a tendency to jerk and mess up the maths he’s working on, breaking his concentration. But his left hand aches, in the wrist, in the fingers, in the bone.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to switch to his right hand after all.

In his work, Five doesn’t notice the plate of sandwiches on his table until the next morning, when he wakes up after passing out in the middle of an equation.

.

There’s so much vomit. It feels like there’s a deep hole inside of Klaus, like a neverending well, from which remains of food are drawn up again and again, with no signs of stopping in sight.

That’s not exactly true, because for the past ten minutes, give or take, he’s been barfing up nothing but bile. Eugh.

“Oh god,” groans Klaus into the toilet bowl over which he’s been hunched over for the better part of an hour. “Why.”

“Why what?” Ben asks, his nose stuck in a book.

“Withdrawal. Why.” He can’t find it in himself to form coherent sentences, and frankly, he also can’t bother. His leg is shaking under his body.

Ben raises an eyebrow without tearing his gaze away from the slightly transparent pages. “Because you’re cutting off something your body is addicted to, which leads to,” he wrinkles his nose, “unpleasant symptoms?”

A shaky laugh escapes Klaus, rattling his chest. “Unpleasant. Understatement of the,” he tries to hold back a gag. “Of the year.”

Ben sighs, throwing a glance at the bottom of his page, no doubt etching the number into his memory. He closes the book, putting it… wherever his books and other ghostly belongings go. Ben crouches down next to Klaus, hand hovering over his shivering back, offering intangible support. Moral support. That’s the word.

“You’re gonna be fine.”

Klaus keels over as another wave of nausea washes over him, overpowering his senses. All he can feel is the scratchiness of his throat, the burning feeling of bile rising to the surface.

He throws up again.

“Yeah?” He croaks, weakly grabbing some toilet paper and wiping at his mouth. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

“Don’t exaggerate. You’ve done this before, you know it’s going to be fine in the end, Klaus.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t hate this,” Klaus mumbles into the toilet bowl.

Ben sits completely, curling his legs to his chest. His arms wrap around them, his chin tucking into the tops of his knees. He looks down to the tiled floor.

“Sorry I can’t help you.”

Klaus waves Ben’s apology away with a hand, slight tremors going through it. “Don’t be such a self-sacrificing dick, Benny. Not your fault.”

Ben rolls his eyes and huffs a partway laugh. Moments later it’s gone, because Klaus is retching up his guts again.

.

His hand is resting on his stomach, lightly squeezing, trying to keep everything contained. He knows it’s illogical, of course. He’s dead, They can’t just burst out of him and tear him apart. Not a second time.

But his skin prickles. Like tiny little needles stabbing into the flesh sewed to his bones over and over again, picking at stitches, trying to unwind his very self.

Ben presses his lips together.

He’s been feeling that prickle a lot lately. It was a constant before, when he could still bleed and drink, when he was sixteen and alive. It stopped when the tentacles tore him from top to bottom, leaving nothing but bits of blue fabric scraps and smears of blood on the ground.

He’s gone thirteen years without the needles, up until he punched Klaus. The dull pain came back then, just for a moment, but he still felt it after.

He’s heard amputees talk about phantom pains where their limbs used to be. That’s what he felt. It was the first pain he’d felt in more than a decade, and isn’t that funny? Just a little? The ghost, feeling phantom pains.

In the theater, it was worse. Unleashing Them after so long, allowing the prickle to grow and tear apart his stomach, skin parting and making way for icy horrors. Ben shivers.

His hand is still on his stomach. Ben peels his fingers away, wincing at the numb feeling that’s left imprinted on his body.

He hates it.

He thinks it’s like withdrawal, sort of. When he’s physical, which Klaus has managed to do once or twice since the theater, he’s filled to the brim with an itching feeling, pulling himself apart. His body feels distorted and heavy and _wrong_. The scent and the feeling and gravity all seem to drag him down, burying his head under the sand.

That always lasts past being in the plane of the living. As soon as he has his body taken away the weightlessness returns, and the itch stays. Prickling spreads from his stomach out and he knows it’s not there, he knows.

But he’s not so sure now.

Withdrawal. He’s seen many people go through it, more times than he’d like to admit. But every single time the cause is the same. There’s something that got into their system, be it by choice or by other means, and then that something got taken away, rapidly.

Klaus gives Ben a body. A presence. Tangibility. Foreign substance. But at the same time, he takes away the thing that he’s used to, the lack of himself and lack of life. Withdrawal.

Then when Ben reverts back, it’s the same thing all over again. The substance is taken away, and he’s sent into full-body tingles and itches.

Ben curls into himself so his legs press against his stomach and chest and closes his eyes. Maybe he should let himself get lost. Fade out under the influence of the anesthetics, let the surgery the tiny needles are trying to perform take place.

Maybe he will. Not yet.

.

There’s fire burning behind him, making Five uncomfortably hot. Ash is drifting down from the sky, falling on his head and sticking to his clothes. He’s going to become part of it soon, he knows. He’s going to fall and never get up again, and the ash will cover his body, consuming him and leaving a pile of dust behind.

Five thinks he might be a parasite.

He’s seen those around. Little crawlies with quick legs moving side to side as they wiggle through the rubble. He’s seen them bury into corpses.

He’s done that, hasn’t he? Appeared in the middle of one giant corpse that is everything in the world combined.

Five closes his eyes. He thinks he can hear something calling his name, but that’s not real. There’s nobody left except for him. Literally nobody could be here to talk to him.

It gets louder, like it’s coming closer. Annoying, is what Five thinks of it. He doesn’t have time for his mind to play tricks on him. He needs to get back to work.

“Five.”

“Stop it,” he snaps, giving in. “Shut up.”

“What’s up with you?” the voice continues. “Five?”

“Leave! You’re not real.” Of course the voice isn’t real. The only real things on the remains of this planet are Five himself, his equations, and Dolores.

“What?”

“I said, _leave_!”

Five jerks when a hand wraps around his wrist. The ashes and fire fade out, and he’s met with Luther’s concerned stare. His hand is warm against Five’s skin.

“What do you mean, I’m not real?”

Five’s throat is suddenly very dry. He swallows.

“Oh.”

.

Klaus is laying in bed, head swimming through an ocean of fire.

That’s what it feels like, at least. His head is burning and his skull feels tight around his brain. He’s sweating, probably. Ben is here too, silently vigilant, keeping watch for other spirits that would take advantage of Klaus in this transition zone state.

He hears voices already.

Klaus shivers. Everything is blurry. Have his walls always had red and blue on them? Have the floors always been so wavy? Has there always been a bloodied silhouette in the corner of the room?

“Klaus.”

He closes his eyes. Ben is good at scaring off other ghosts, but even he can’t guarantee none will get through. Seems like this one slipped through his brother’s defenses.

“Klaus.”

He feels a hand brush his cheek. It’s warm, unlike any ghost he’s ever touched before. Even more, he _knows_ that touch. Knows that hand, knows that voice, knows it all.

He peels his eyes open.

“Dave?” he croaks. Dave smiles at him, his eyes wrinkling at the edges like they did when he was alive.

“Klaus.”

Klaus reaches up with a shaking hand to Dave’s, wanting to hold it, to press it to his cheek, but.

But.

But Ben says, “Klaus, who are you talking to? There’s nobody there.” And Klaus’s hand goes through Dave’s and to his own skin, and Dave is still smiling, smiling. Now Ben is frowning, worried and confused, getting up and standing over Klaus, right. Where. Dave. Is.

Klaus laughs. It comes out as more of a choked-up sob.

Some of the symptoms of drug withdrawal are vomiting, sweating, anxiety, fatigue, and hallucinations.

.

Klaus and Five are both going through withdrawal, Ben thinks. He is too, maybe. Withdrawal of a different kind. All three of them have a withdrawal they’re forced to suffer through, and all three withdrawals are different.

Ben doesn’t know what to do to help. He watches Five sleep sometimes, making sure his brother doesn’t die in the night.

He doesn’t think Klaus would find it pleasant to have two dead brothers following him instead of one.

**Author's Note:**

> ...Yeah. This was supposed to be longer, but I couldn't figure out how to get that Comfort aspect of Hurt/Comfort so... just Hurt.
> 
> My tumblr's [@seven-misfits](https://seven-misfits.tumblr.com/), in case you want to find me there. Drop a line! I'd love to know what you thought of this.
> 
> Again, I wrote run-ons. But it's also okay because it's part of my creative flow and it fits into the story shhh.
> 
> Uuh one more thing, I have no idea how withdrawal works other than what a quick Google search told me so if something is wrong I'm sorry.


End file.
